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Sanctified by Blood

Blood; thick, viscid, potent fluid. The word blood carries almost as much meaning and power to our psyches as the actual substance does to our bodies. It captures our attention. It is the bringer of life and death and powerful experiences. We feel, as modern 'evolved' humans, that we have left the blood worship and blood sacrifice of our past behind us, yet the gruesome and the macabre still reach out and demand our attentions. What is the strange power of the blood pulsing in our veins? Is there now and has there always been a sacred creative power latent within our blood.

Throughout evolution, blood has played an important role in human endeavors. Perhaps this originated with the experience of death during the hunt and the departure of life linked with the outflowing of blood, and with the outflowing of the woman's blood during birth and the arrival of life. The Ashanti of Ghana believe an individual's blood is derived from the goddess of the earth through that individual's mother. However it originated, the beliefs and feelings about blood are embedded in our psyches, creating instinctive reactions to its presence. A woman's menstrual blood has held a highly charged place in the beliefs of many cultures. Thought to be the container or vehicle of powerful transformational energy, it's been used in healing, cleansing, purification, and empowerment. Perhaps it is a corruption or extrapolation of instinctual feelings that lead to the act of returning blood to the earth through sacrifice. To the Mayans, blood was the mortar of life, and offerings were made to seal important events. Male nobles drew blood from the penis, ear, or tongue; women drew blood from the tongue. Blood was also drawn from the ears, fingernails, and mouths of war captives before they were sacrificed.

Some of the most significant occurrences of blood 'magic' in our culture today arise from Christianity. Many feel that the Holy Spirit passed into Gaea when the blood streamed from the wounds of Christ and fell to the earth. Thus Christ consciousness became part of the earth spirit and the unconsciousness of Gaea. The receptor sites in the blood remain to be passed on and are available for access and activation at the right time. There are other ways Christ's potentized blood has become manifest: blood collected after the crucifixion; blood produced by miracles, statues bleeding and stigmata; the miracle of the Eucharist; the transformed blood of various saints that embodied Christ consciousness; and the blood that was shed at Christ's circumcision. Longinous wielded the spear of destiny and caused blood and water to flow from the side of Christ. Later the same centurion was cured by the holy blood of the crucifixion. Powerful sacred relics laden with potentized blood are woven into our awareness as spiritual beings; such as the grail and spear, the holy foreskin, and the head of John the Baptist.

This hidden and powerful potential placed in the blood has therefore given rise to many of the legends of the Holy Grail, knightly quests, acts of "true love" and Chivalry. Royal and adept "bloodlines" were suppose to contain powerful clairvoyant and healing abilities as well as other paranormal powers. This blood mystique was manifest in elected prophets, royalty , troubadours, free knights, mystics and scholars. They became archetypically evocative figures. Some were immensely wealthy; others poverty-stricken but all represent that which is considered good, fair and noble. Those of noble birth who were somehow 'chosen' , were able to heal, to see the future with this 'Sang Real' or Royal Blood. These nobles felt that they were to 'serve a higher purpose'. They respected and practiced a 'Code of Honor'. As Thomas Mann wrote, "Life then, at any rate, significant life, was in ancient times the reconstitution of the myth of 'Christ Consciousness' in flesh and blood."

These 'myths' of Sang Real and potentized blood continued to manifest in recent times. Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leaders of the attempt to assassinate Hitler, was such a nobleman. He regarded himself and many of his friends with precisely this kind of 'mythic consciousness'. Hitler also twisted these beliefs to serve his own ends. The die Blutfahne or flag of blood was used by Nazi's as one of their most significant objects. This flag had been stained with the blood of their fallen conspirators in Munich in 1923. They then carried the analogies of blood even further by using the flag in a special ceremony called the 'insemination of the flags'. During this ceremony the Fuhrer would make ritual movements mimicking the movement of the cattle breeder guiding the bull's penis into the cows vagina with his own hand as the Blutfahne was brought into contact with new battle flags, as if fertilizing them. In modern times, myths about blood command very real presence in the activities of groups pursuing the occult, black magic, wicca, and satanism. These events are popularized and polarized in the media by folkloric reports of human sacrifice, ritual bloodletting, and the ingestion of human blood. Whatever the extent of these phenomena, they elicit a highly charged emotional response. This emotional potency benefits those who exploit it. With the predominance of secular beliefs in our society, these powers tend to serve the needs and desires of the profane more often that the sacred.

All these images and concepts are swirling inside our psyche. Is there a real connection to the fluid pulsing in our veins? Let's take a closer look at this potentized fluid. Blood is really a very complex substance. Though it is most commonly thought of as the fluid which carries oxygen, it also contains the infection fighting cells without which we cannot live. Its fluid component takes nutrients, antibodies, and a multitude of chemical messengers from place to place within the body. All these components exist in a balance regulated by the other body systems, a balance that continually pulses with change. Oxygen levels rise and fall with each breath. Nutrient levels fluctuate through the day as we eat. The amount and variety of chemical messengers changes continually in response to the needs inside the body as well as outside the body. Perceived events evoke powerful emotions like fear and love which flood the system with different chemical messages. The blood cells themselves are continually changing with as many as 200 billion cells being destroyed and replaced each day. All of these variables are coursing through the arteries and veins and circulating completely every minute and up to four times that pace when the body is energized.

To this we add the vibration. Each pulse of the heart produces a vibration in the blood. On top of this basic vibration there are many higher overtones of frequency that occur. These correlate with the smaller sizes of the arteries and the veins as they scale down to the capillaries creating a wide diversity of vibration. This flexibility and diversity of vibrations within the blood is the key to a healthy system, when entrainment into one pulse occurs there is an increased danger of heart attack.

Flexibility and diversity abounding in the blood sets the stage for a responsive, dynamic potential. Since triggers outside the body intimately affect this changing system there is a direct and adaptable connection formed between the world, the blood and body, and consciousness all vibrating simultaneously. These vibrations create an interference pattern with the capability of transmitting or accessing information fields. As with holographic phenomena, these interference patterns may reach beyond hardware that created them, beyond the blood-body connection. If this is so then blood may be intuitional and hyperspatial, a morphic attractor, capable of reaching morphogenetic fields, species-wide informational fields generated and sustained by human-kind, past and present. Memories of heightened awareness, peak experiences and acts of kindness are then inherent in blood consciousness.

Perhaps this 'blood consciousness' is the root of the creative power of blood. Its has the ability to move us into peak experiences and heightened awareness and access what seems to be the predominate theme of blood mythology, the connection with the sacred. Call it genetic memory, morphogenetic fields, archetypal energies or instincts, we are linked to the millennia with our blood. We have the potential pulsing within our own veins, the bringer of life and death and a link to that which is beyond life and death.

Further reading: "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot and "A New Science of Life" by Rupert Sheldrake (Morphogenetic Fields).